Morning Come, Maria's Gone: A Song History

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The Traditional Ballad Index files this Appalachian song under the title "Maria" as a nonballad, Roud 3625, in which the singer wonders where Maria has gone, each verse closing on a line about the early morning.^[1] Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles took down a version called "Maria's Gone" from Hillard Smith at Hindman, Kentucky, on 20 September 1917, and printed it with the play-party games in the second volume of English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians.^[2] The Index cross-references "The Drunken Sailor," but its editors offer different guesses about the connection: one keeps the two songs apart because the theme differs, the chorus is missing and the tune is altered, and supposes someone later set new words to the sailor melody, while another, noting that Sharp's 1917 tune is rather different, suggests the words and an older melody came first and were moved to the sailor tune afterward.^[1]

Jean Ritchie gave a version with quite different verses in her 1955 book Singing Family of the Cumberlands, and recorded the song in 1971 for her LP Clear Waters Remembered.^[2] That album was issued by Sire, with "Morning Come, Maria Gone" as its sixth track.^[3] The English singer Peter Bellamy credited Ritchie as his source when he recorded it in 1985 on his EFDSS album Second Wind, and later recordings include those by Jon Boden in 2011, the Melrose Quartet in 2017 and Narthen in 2018.^[2]

On the dulcimer, Aubrey Atwater sets it in DAG tuning in Song By Song, Vol. II, her book of dulcimer tablature, which puts each song in whichever tuning suits it and prints words alongside many of the tunes.^[4]

Sources

1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Maria".
2. Mainly Norfolk: "Maria's Gone".
3. AllMusic: "Jean Ritchie, Clear Waters Remembered".
4. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
5. Image: Henry Wolf, Morning Mists, wood engraving, late 19th to early 20th century. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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